Sarah McLachlan Details Challenges With Daughter in New Song

Sarah McLachlan’s newest single “Gravity” hits close to home emotionally for the singer.

Speaking to Variety in an interview published on Monday, August 11, McLachlan, 57, divulged how much she loved performing the song after it was inspired by the “combative and fraught relationship” with her eldest daughter. (McLachlan shares daughters India Ann Sushil Sood, 23, and Taja Summer Sood, 18, with her ex-husband Ashwin Sood.)

“I love playing this song because of the challenges that I went through with my firstborn daughter. It feels really sweet to be able to sing this song and know that we’re in such a better place, having come through this really challenging time together,” she told the outlet.

Variety also noted a press statement in which McLachlan said of the song: “For a long time my daughter and I had a very combative and fraught relationship, and what I came to realize is that so much of what I perceived as obstinance or rage was actually masking a ton of anxiety on her part.”

She continued: “We went to counseling together, and I learned that she felt so alone and unvalidated by me — which was devastating to hear, but it led us both to change the way we communicate with each other. I wrote ‘Gravity’ as a way of saying to her, ‘I’ve always loved you and want the best for you, and you’re perfect the way you are.’”

McLachlan gushed over the emotional single, pinpointing it as one of her favorites on her new Better Broken album, which will hit shelves on September 19.

“I think it’s one of the strongest tracks, if not the strongest track, on the record. It’s highly emotional, and because I’ve had the opportunity to play it to other people for a year or two, the connection that people have had to it has been pretty immediate and intense,” she said.

McLachlan has long drawn on her personal relationships when creating music, including her divorce from her daughters’ father, Ashwin, in 2008.

“Yeah, the marriage part didn’t quite work out,” she told Spinner in 2011. “Apparently that’s a bit of an epidemic, so I just make light of it.”

She continued: “Coming to terms with the fact that my marriage was a failure was devastating and very difficult. I blamed myself for a lot of things. It took me a very long time to get over it.”

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One of the ways McLachlan moved on from the heartbreak was to lean into her emotions as she wrote 7th studio album, Laws of Illusion, at the time.

“Music has always been incredibly cathartic for me, whether it’s writing my own stuff or singing other people’s music; it’s very freeing,” McLachlan explained to Spinner. “But it did take me a long while to be able to write again because I was just too far down a deep dark hole to do anything. I had to crawl back up, get some light in and have some objectivity before I could start writing again.”